No need for my dad to answer that question, since we both know good and well he will be fishing. As for the rest of you, clearly a perusal of the sports page, maybe a cup of coffee, some grub and hopefully a trip into the great outdoors. It’s your day, after all, and with any luck you will make the most of it.

Me? I will be living up to the title on my first official Father’s Day. With Mom working the standard 12-hour hospital shift, Dad’s Day includes the customary bottle management and associated diaper duty demanded of a toddler yet to reach her first birthday. We may need just a little more luck than the rest of you.

Since wading into fatherhood for the first time last summer, I’ve been advised from just about every perspective of outdoor enthusiasm, from the guys who fondly recall carrying their little ones out to the fishing hole in baby-specific backpacks to the friend who welded a baby seat to the front of his personal pontoon boat to share the thrill of the river. I’m happy to report that he has since listened to some return advice and purchased a raft with an actual floor.

Our little tyke hasn’t made it onto the river quite yet, though she has dipped her toes in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is a regular at the local dog pond. She camps like a champ, bikes more than her old man, loves a long hike and frolics in the hot springs. Now, if we could just teach her how to roll cast …

As a new dad, it’s become evident that there’s an infinite range of ideas as to what’s an appropriate activity to introduce to a toddler. And most of them are directly dependent upon Dad’s (and Mom’s) threshold for activity, or inactivity, as it were.

“You sure have been watching a lot of basketball lately,” my better half noted during Game 4 of the NBA Finals. She may as well have substituted “football,” “baseball,” “hockey,” “the Olympics” or “X Games” over the past year. Another of the many lessons I’ve learned this year is that professional sports were invented for young fathers, because they offer a passive activity surrogate during the kid’s many naps. Heck, I’ve been watching a lot more of “Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild” too.

But, with her second summer season and some of that aforementioned luck, that’s about to change.

“Honey, I’m taking the kids fishing,” is an utterance that likely will never land you in the doghouse, Buchanan writes. “What self-respecting, time-deprived spouse would turn that down?”

It’s the kids these days who may turn out to be the tougher sell. Among the disheartening statistics compiled in the final chapter of Buchanan’s book are the now well-known numbers relating to childhood obesity (22 million of the world’s children under age 5) and the alarming number of hours (about 44 a week) that kids spend in front of a TV, computer or video game.

Tipping the scales at a bit more than 18 pounds, our little minnow doesn’t appear to be at severe risk just yet. But the ultimate point of writing, and reading, a book like Buchanan’s is “start ’em young.” By the time they hit kindergarten, they won’t know any other way.

Sure, there are more conventional active pastimes that involve chasing balls, dancing or doing back bends, and I’m sure we’ll come around to those in due time. But this is Colorado, after all, so we’re taking advantage of its outdoor offerings.

Sorry, David Stern, but I will be skipping out on Game 5 on Sunday to learn about my little girl’s resolve as a backpacker and fly-fisher. It’s Father’s Day, after all, and I have a job to do.